Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman
Boston, and there was no safety except 'under the paw of the British
Lion,' as she quaintly said. But the first winter was terribly severe
for these poor runaways. They earned their bread by chopping wood in the
snows of a Canadian forest; they were frost-bitten, hungry, and naked.
Harriet was their good angel. She kept house for her brother, and the
poor creatures boarded with her. She worked for them, begged for them,
prayed for them, with the strange familiarity of communion with God
which seems natural to these people, and carried them by the help of God
through the hard winter.
"In the Spring she returned to the States, and as usual earned money by
working in hotels and families as a cook. From Cape May, in the fall of
1852, she went back once more to Maryland, and brought away nine more
fugitives.
"Up to this time she had expended chiefly her own money in these
expeditions--money which she had earned by hard work in the drudgery of
the kitchen. Never did any one more exactly fulfill the sense of George
Herbert--
"A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine."
"But it was not possible for such virtues long to remain hidden from the
keen eyes of the Abolitionists. She became known to Thomas Garrett, the
large-hearted Quaker of Wilmington, who has aided the escape of three
thousand fugitives; she found warm friends in Philadelphia and New York,
and wherever she went. These gave her money, which she never spent for
her own use, but laid up for the help of her people, and especially for
her journeys back to the 'land of Egypt,' as she called her old home. By
reason of her frequent visits there, always carrying away some of the
oppressed, she got among her people the name of 'Moses,' which it seems
she still retains.
"Between 1852 and 1857, she made but two of these journeys, in
consequence partly of the increased vigilance of the slaveholders, who
had suffered so much by the loss of their property. A great reward was
offered for her capture, and she several times was on the point of being
taken, but always escaped by her quick wit, or by 'warnings' from
Heaven--for it is time to notice one singular trait in her character.
She is the most shrewd and practical person in the world, yet she is a
firm believer in omens, dreams, and warnings. She declares that before
her escape from slavery, she used to dream of flying over fields and
towns, and rivers and mountains, looking down upon them 'like a bird,'
and reaching at last a great fence, or sometimes a river, over which she
would try to fly, 'but it 'peared like I wouldn't hab de strength, and
jes as I was sinkin' down, dare would be ladies all drest in white ober
dere, and dey would put out dere arms and pull me 'cross.' There is
nothing strange in this, perhaps, but she declares that when she came
North she remembered these very places as those she had seen in her
dreams, and many of the ladies who befriended her were those she had
been helped by in her visions.
"Then she says she always knows when there is danger near her,--she
does not know how, exactly, but ''pears like my heart go flutter,
flutter, and den dey may say "Peace, Peace," as much as dey likes, _I
know its gwine to be war!_' She is very firm on this point, and ascribes
to this her great impunity, in spite of the lethargy before mentioned,
which would seem likely to throw her into the hands of her enemies. She
says she inherited this power, that her father could always predict the
weather, and that he foretold the Mexican war.
"In 1867 she made her most venturesome journey, for she brought with her
to the North her old parents, who were no longer able to walk such
distances as she must go by night. Consequently she must hire a wagon
for them, and it required all her ingenuity to get them through Maryland
and Delaware safe. She accomplished it, however, and by the aid of her
friends she brought them safe to Canada, where they spent the winter.
Her account of their sufferings there--of her mother's complaining and
her own philosophy about it--is a lesson of trust in Providence better
than many sermons. But she decided to bring them to a more comfortable
place, and so she negotiated with Mr. Seward--then in the Senate--for a
little patch of ground with a house on it, at Auburn, near his own
home. To the credit of the Secretary of State it should be said, that
he sold her the property on very favorable terms, and gave her some time
for payment. To this house she removed her parents, and set herself to
work to pay for her purchase. It was on this errand that she first
visited Boston--we believe in the winter of 1858-9. She brought a few
letters from her friends in New York, but she could herself neither read
nor write, and she was obliged to trust to her wits that they were
delivered to the right persons. One of them, as it happened, was to the
present writer, who received it by another hand, and called to see her
at her boarding-house. It was curious to see the caution with which she
received her visitor until she felt assured that there was no mistake.
One of her means of security was to carry with her the daguerreotypes of
her friends, and show them to each new person. If they recognized the
likeness, then it was all right.
"Pains were taken to secure her the attention to which her great
services to humanity entitled her, and she left New England with a
handsome sum of money towards the payment of her debt to Mr. Seward.
Before she left, however, she had several interviews with Captain Brown,
then in Boston. He is supposed to have communicated his plans to her,
and to have been aided by her in obtaining recruits and money among her
people. At any rate, he always spoke of her with the greatest respect,
and declared that 'General Tubman,' as he styled her, was a better
officer than most whom he had seen, and could command an army as
successfully as she had led her small parties of fugitives.
"Her own veneration for Captain Brown has always been profound, and
since his murder, has taken the form of a religion. She had often risked
her own life for her people, and she thought nothing of that; but that a
white man, and a man so noble and strong, should so take upon himself
the burden of a despised race, she could not understand, and she took
refuge from her perplexity in the mysteries of her fervid religion.
"Again, she laid great stress on a dream which she had just before she
met Captain Brown in Canada. She thought she was in 'a wilderness sort
of place, all full of rocks and bushes,' when she saw a serpent raise
its head among the rocks, and as it did so, it became the head of an old
man with a long white beard, gazing at her 'wishful like, jes as ef he
war gwine to speak to me,' and then two other heads rose up beside him,
younger than he,--and as she stood looking at them, and wondering what
they could want with her, a great crowd of men rushed in and struck down
the younger heads, and then the head of the old man, still looking at
her so 'wishful.' This dream she had again and again, and could not
interpret it; but when she met Captain Brown, shortly after, behold, he
was the very image of the head she had seen. But still she could not
make out what her dream signified, till the news came to her of the
tragedy of Harper's Ferry, and then she knew the two other heads were
his two sons. She was in New York at that time, and on the day of the
affair at Harper's Ferry, she felt her usual warning that something was
wrong--she could not tell what. Finally she told her hostess that it
must be Captain Brown who was in trouble, and that they should soon hear
bad news from him. The next day's newspaper brought tidings of what had
happened.
"Her last visit to Maryland was made after this, in December, 1860; and
in spite of the agitated condition of the country, and the greater
watchfulness of the slaveholders, she brought away seven fugitives, one
of them an infant, which must be drugged with opium to keep it from
crying on the way, and so revealing the hiding place of the party. She
brought these safely to New York, but there a new difficulty met her. It
was the mad winter of compromises, when State after State, and
politician after politician, went down on their knees to beg the South
not to secede. The hunting of fugitive slaves began again. Mr. Seward
went over to the side of compromise. He knew the history of this poor
woman; he had given his enemies a hold on him, by dealing with her; it
was thought he would not scruple to betray her. The suspicion was an
unworthy one, for though the Secretary could betray a cause, he could
not surely have put her enemies on the track of a woman who was thus in
his power, after such a career as hers had been. But so little
confidence was then felt in Mr. Seward, by men who had voted for him and
with him, that they hurried Harriet off to Canada, sorely against her
will.
"She did not long remain there. The war broke out, for which she had
been long looking, and she hastened to her New England friends to
prepare for another expedition to Maryland, to bring away the last of
her family.
"Before she could start, however, the news came of the capture of Port
Royal. Instantly she conceived the idea of going there and working
among her people on the islands and the mainland. Money was given her,
a pass was secured through the agency of Governor Andrew, and she went
to Beaufort. There she has made herself useful in many ways--has been
employed as a spy by General Hunter, and finally has piloted Col.
Montgomery on his most successful expedition. We gave some notice of
this fact last week. Since then we have received the following letter,
dictated by her, from which it appears that she needs some contributions
for her work. We trust she will receive them, for none has better
deserved it. She asks nothing for herself, except that her wardrobe may
be replenished, and even this she will probably share with the first
needy person she meets.
"'BEAUFORT, S. C., June 30, 1863.
* * * "'Last fall, when the people here became very much alarmed for
fear of an invasion from the rebels, all my clothes were packed and sent
with others to Hilton Head, and lost; and I have never been able to get
any trace of them since. I was sick at the time, and unable to look
after them myself. I want, among the rest, a _bloomer_ dress, made of
some coarse, strong material, to wear on _expeditions_. In our late
expedition up the Combahee River, in coming on board the boat, I was
carrying _two pigs_ for a poor sick woman, who had a child to carry, and
the order "double quick" was given, and I started to run, stepped on my
dress, it being rather long, and fell and tore it almost off, so that
when I got on board the boat, there was hardly anything left of it but
shreds. I made up my mind then I would never wear a long dress on
another expedition of the kind, but would have a _bloomer_ as soon as I
could get it. So please make this known to the ladies, if you will, for
I expect to have use for it very soon, probably before they can get it
to me.
"'You have, without doubt, seen a full account of the expedition I refer
to. Don't you think we colored people are entitled to some credit for
that exploit, under the lead of the brave Colonel Montgomery? We
weakened the rebels somewhat on the Combahee River, by taking and
bringing away _seven hundred and fifty-six_ head of their most valuable
live stock, known up in your region as "contrabands," and this, too,
without the loss of a single life on our part, though we had good reason
to believe that a number of rebels bit the dust. Of these seven hundred
and fifty-six contrabands, nearly or quite all the able-bodied men have
joined the colored regiments here.